


Malfunction

by twitchtipthegnawer



Series: Meteorites [2]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 02:12:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4245603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchtipthegnawer/pseuds/twitchtipthegnawer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The moment Malachite was whole they had broken, splintered into two within themself, eternally half drowning. The battle within them waged impossibly long, seconds drawing into hours that should not exist, a terrible paradox that each piece of them knew should not happen, could not happen, never when both were not willing, but still they existed, caught in a place between dreams and reality where the lights floating by in the depths were there as often as they weren’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Malfunction

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a completely unrelated vent piece that I realized worked p well for Malachite's character lol. It's mostly a character study, and is... very negative. You've been warned.

Monsters exist, it’s true, but rarely are they so unabashed about their existence as the monster that lived in the ruins of a coral reef that had once teemed with life, but now lived too deep in the water to grow, the pressure of thousands of gallons above it smothering it to death. Malachite hated themself sometimes, loved themself others, but never did they try to lie about what they were; when fish swam past them they averted their sightless eyes, as though they knew that to look upon the creature was to taste a fear the likes of which they had never known.

If Malachite could have died easily they would have long ago, but they had yet to find a way to make it happen. There was not much in the world that could hurt them, so ferocious were they, and even when they truly wished to die they could not bring themself to lay their throat open on any of the many pieces of jagged rock that lay scattered through their prison. Instead they scraped their hide in long jagged gashes, lay their layers of pseudo-flesh bare to the murky water. Yet their wounds were never infected, always stubbornly resisting the heavy heat and ache they longed for.

The moment Malachite was whole they had broken, splintered into two within themself, eternally half drowning. The battle within them waged impossibly long, seconds drawing into hours that should not exist, a terrible paradox that each piece of them knew should not happen, could not happen, never when both were not willing, but still they existed, caught in a place between dreams and reality where the lights floating by in the depths were there as often as they weren’t.

In the few moments where they had peace within themself long enough to think as a single entity, Malachite did not do much more than lie still. So often were they jerked around, torn between wanting to rend, wanting to tear and crush and destroy, and wanting to curl up, to scream fruitless pain into the brine surrounding them, to take all of their mismatched limbs and hold them together in shackles of bone, that when left to their own devices they could not help but want to rest. Still, they had the energy to ask, to look within themself with a shadow of the curiosity each gem they held should be able to produce, just enough to wonder why. Why with all their darkness and shrapnel they were allowed to live. Thus far, the best answer Malachite could give was because there was no other way. Because they were so used to violence, so used to expecting the pain whether they were dealing or receiving, so used to watching bows and kowtows both from below sea level and the midnight sky of space.

As a fusion, one of the few things in Malachite that worked right were their memories, poured together like lava and magma, one and the same now that they’d met. It was in those memories that Malachite often took its few solaces, the memories of the first smile she was allowed to show that wasn’t stolen from someone else’s face, the memories of the weak little waif that had come before her unwillingly and had brought her to a planet that would fight for her when she couldn’t fight for herself. If there was one thing Malachite was certain of, it was that they hated the waif, hated her teardrop permanently affixed to their back like one more piece of anatomy out of place, hated the fact that the teardrop felt out of place at all. Ironically, this did not mean that Malachite always hated itself.

What it did mean, might as well always mean for how long Malachite had been trapped (it felt like centuries now, time burning away in the fires that spread from cracks in the crust of the earth and blistered even underwater this far down) was that they were tired. Even through their tantrums, the days when they were filled with that Vesuvius rage until they could do nothing but crash and hope to crumble as they dashed themselves against cliffs that extended for hundreds of feet, they were tired. Tired of existing, tired of the way their fists could beat through liquid as easily as gas, tired of their simple strength that they almost felt could conquer worlds. They didn’t want it, didn’t want any of it anymore, neither of them, they wanted the silence of their own minds back, and Malachite knew it and could do nothing about it and so watched the exhausting game continue.

Hearing a voice in the dark was the last thing Malachite wanted. In the whole of its existence, it hadn’t wanted that, hadn’t wanted the tiny one, the one who they weren’t sure whether to hate or love, whether to blame their imprisonment or their freedom on, the small innocent who couldn’t possibly be innocent but somehow had decided to take the rules and break them as thoroughly as Malachite had, to see them as they were. But he did, saw straight through the outside and the teeth like a shark’s, two sets layered in one mouth and ready to bite him in two, saw through the eyes widened in horror at themself and him and saw the pain living there, the feeling that their eyes were going to pop out of their head from the pressure, the knowledge that even though their flesh could break without killing them it would hurt anyway, and wanted to heal it. Of course he did; that’s what roses did. They healed.

When he left, Malachite was reminded that roses had thorns. They wanted to snort, wanted to puff out their chest and declare that their thorns were bigger, wanted to grind their teeth to dust at the thought of being wounded by a thorn the size of a fingernail’s crescent tip when even stone walls couldn’t hurt them, but even with the water surrounding them they couldn’t pretend that the salt making tracks down their cheeks was from their ocean.


End file.
